Australian growers visit apple industry in Washington
In August 2017 APAL took a group of 28 Australian apple and pear growers on a tour of apple and pear production in Washington State in the USA. The group visited more than 25 sites, meeting 30-plus growers, researchers and consultants.
Aussie growers at Washington State University’s Sunrise Orchard: (lt to rt)Angus Crawford, Josie Fouache, Krys Lockhart, Craig Harris, James Filsell, Peter Cassidy, Lois Harris, Ian Robson, Barry McLean, Bhavesh Donga, Glenn Masterton, Tim Montague, Brent Reeve, Danny Young, Rod Taylor, Stefano Mussachi (WSU), Andrew Flavell, Joe Ceravolo, Matthew McAulay, Mark Filsell, Anna Ceravolo, Jamie Vickers, Mitchell McNabb, Rebecca Whittaker, Shane Coster, Mark Stewart (back), Daniel Lim (front), Nathan Flavel, Noel Mason.
Many APAL trips have been run to Washington State in previous years and, after travelling there for the first time, it is clear why we keep being drawn to that area. For a lot of the group this was their first visit. What was most striking was that the growers we visited all placed a very high value on science and experimentation as a means by which to continuously fine-tune their orchards to drive productivity and improve quality. On top of this, growers clearly had a strong sense of pride and satisfaction in their work. It was a privilege to meet and learn from them and discover more about their industry.
The tour focused on examining how orchard production could be positioned to drive higher yields and fruit quality in light of increasing labour pressures and the potential for robotic harvesting in the future.
Washington State was the ideal backdrop against which to explore solutions to challenges faced by Australia’s apple industry because it faces global issues that are fundamentally the same as those faced in Australia.
Worldwide, apple and pear growers are great sharers of information, and travel is a significant opportunity for Australian growers to gain knowledge of techniques and practices applied by their peers abroad and implement changes in their own orchards.
Over the two-week period we visited commercial orchards, research orchards, experimental orchards, nurseries, packsheds, a merchandise retail store and machinery dealerships.
Orchard design at Auvil Fruit Company
The best lessons from the tour were about orchard systems. In particular, the visit to Auvil Fruit Company’s Vantage Ranch gave many insights into how to set up and manage two-dimensional (2D) systems to give consistent tonnage and high-quality pack-outs.
The Auvil Fruit Company provides probably the best examples of the 2D system in the world and the President of Orchard Management, Del Feigal, showed us how they deliver this system with such precision. He explained that by paying attention to detail and using the many tools at their disposal
they get the consistency that they require. Practices he mentioned included planting, rootstock selection, tree training, variable and precision irrigation management, fertiliser management, girdling, blossom thinning, root pruning and tree training. Environmental factors such as high wind, heat, hail and frost are also taken into consideration.
To achieve such a high-level system, a remarkable level of detailed information is needed, but the payoff is higher revenue driven by higher productivity and pack-outs. In just one example, we saw that a 13-foot-tall eight-wire 2D ‘V’ system had achieved 165 tonnes per hectare (t/ha) of high-quality Cripps Pink the previous season. A similar yield would have been achieved this year if it hadn’t been for some overly aggressive
leaf ripping in the lower three wires that also removed the next year’s buds. As a result, the expected yield for that block this 2017 season is 120t/ha.
Nearby we also viewed a pedestrian version on a six-foot-six tall, four-wire 2D ‘V’ which will achieve 100t/ha by fifth leaf, as their other systems had already done. Pedestrian orchards are designed so that all the work can be done from the ground, which removes the need for ladders and platforms. For Del, this pedestrian system came about to accommodate management of the low growth habit of the propriety apple Aurora. Since then, the pedestrian orchard had proved as productive as the normal systems but the production costs were less. In a competitive labour market more workers prefer the pedestrian system, which in turn increases reliability of labour supply.
Labour management at Stemilt Growers
One major challenge for Washington State is the increasing cost of labour combined with the declining availability of workers. Whether it’s a 2D system or not, growers must commit to designing simple, narrow, productive (SNAP) canopies that achieve high early yields and that can handle new technologies such as platforms and, ultimately, robotic harvesters.
Dale Goldy of Stemilt Growers, a recent guest at Future Orchards®, has chosen for now not to do 2D systems but showed the group the recently-planted tall spindle system at Capstone Ranch, where there was also a focus on consistency. The site had a history of 60 years of cropping previously and, from grid soil samples, Dale saw major variations in soil pH, potassium and phosphorus. To improve consistency, soil variation was addressed using variable-rate technology to fertilise and ameliorate the soil before planting to apples.
“This has become our signature way of planting,” Dale said. “[Developing] the technical expertise of the staff to know what’s expected of all the little details has probably been a six-year process.”
A common theme emerging from the tour was that growers regarded tree-to-tree consistency as a performance indicator for their systems. With so much invested over such large areas, these systems must have consistency, because consistency is vital for driving higher yields per hectare, increasing productivity and delivering consistency of product.
Future thinking and practical ideas for now
While the orchard systems shown captured the imagination of many of our growers for their future planning, they also picked up many practical ideas to implement immediately. For example, to avoid heat stress many Washington growers use misters/foggers for overhead cooling rather than rotating sprinklers. These misters could be used effectively in Australia provided appropriate consideration was given to the spacing and the environmental conditions such as wind direction. Often, overhead sprinkler systems require quantities of water that growers either don’t have or find they result in excessive saturation of soils.
In one example the standard rotating sprinklers required 326L/ha/minute of water whereas the misters required 84L/ha/minute. Both systems operated on a program of 20 minutes ‘on’ and 40 minutes ‘off’ and were activated in temperatures above 30°C. These systems were also effective when used at night to lower night-time temperatures and improve colour development.
Smart ways to increase profits
The Washington State apple industry is currently experiencing significant investment in new and improved orchards, pack-sheds and proprietary varieties. In recent years the major challenges have been the significant changes to the minimum wage rate. For example, in 2016 it was US$9.50 per hour and in 2017 it has risen to US$11 per hour. By 2020 the minimum wage is scheduled to increase to US$13.50 – a 42 per cent increase from the 2016 level. There is also major investment into extra housing to secure more labour out of the country’s H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers program.
To address this, Washington growers are looking at every strategy they can use to increase their revenue through a combination of increasing yields, improving pack-out and using more high-value proprietary varieties.
Growers are also switching to, or are already into, organics to meet strong growth in demand. In the US it takes three years to transition an orchard from conventional to organic production.
A Washington State University economic study comparing organic to conventional production showed that organic systems yielded eight per cent less, had 12 per cent higher costs and generated a 42 per cent higher price. Over the past five years in the US, retail demand for organics has risen by
51 per cent and the price has gone up by 10 per cent, creating an attractive opportunity for growers who can meet this demand and achieve higher returns.
In the next few weeks a more detailed report of the tour will be available to growers on request. Other topics from the tour not mentioned in this article included use of plant growth regulators, varieties, rootstocks, grafting, orchard renewal, trellis engineering, nurseries, blossom thinning, automated distribution, platforms, mechanisation, spraying systems, mechanical weeding/pruning/thinning, and crop loading. While apples were the focus of this trip we also visited some stone fruit and cherry blocks.
Acknowledgement
Thank you to everyone who participated and the various host growers, researchers and advisors throughout the journey. A special thank you goes to Karen Lewis and the team at Washington State University as well as Tom Auvil who helped with the design and delivery of this program.
The preparation and management of this tour and Angus’ attendance was a strategic levy investment under the Hort Innovation Apple and Pear Fund and was funded by Hort Innovation using the apple and pear levy and funds from the Australian Government.
